Across the Universe - Beth Revis [60]
“There’s a hatch down there,” I start to say, but before I can finish, Harley takes off down the rows to where I’ve pointed. I turn to Amy. “But he doesn’t know the code to open the door.”
She throws me a half-smile. “Let him figure it out. Why don’t we try to find something here that can help? Can you show me where Mr.... er... Robertson was?”
We go down the aisle of cryo chambers marked 75-100, and stop at Number 100.
Amy reaches toward the empty tray with shaking fingers. I wonder if she’s imagining her parents on that tray, or herself. Before her fingers actually touch it, though, she snatches back her hand and holds it against her.
“So, what should we be doing?” I ask, trying to distract her from whatever thoughts she’s having that are making her draw into herself.
Amy steps back, looks at the ground. Her eyes scan the bare, clean floor, then rove over the clinically neat room.
“I don’t know what I expected to find,” Amy says. “I guess I thought this was like a cop show, and I’d come down here and find a fiber that I could match to Eldest’s shirt, or a blood drop we could DNA test, but I don’t even know if you have DNA testing here—”
“The biometric scanners read DNA,” I interject, but she’s not listening to me.
“Or maybe a giant fingerprint...” Her voice trails off. “Harley’s art supplies,” she says. She looks me fully in the face. “Harley’s art supplies!”
“What?”
“Harley has brushes. And he sketched me with charcoal before he started painting me. He’s got everything I need.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” I say, but I’m smiling too, because she’s gotten back that spark of life she’d lost when she first got off the elevator.
“Harley!” she calls, jumping up and heading toward the end of the aisle. “Harley!”
I have no idea why she needs them. I just know that I’d face another Plague to get them for her if I had to. Fortunately, it’s a lot easier than that.
“Com link: Harley,” I say, pressing my wi-com.
“What?” Harley’s voice asks impatiently in my ear.
“Get your art box.”
“Where’s the hatch with the stars? There are a lot of doors and hatches and things down here, but they’re all locked.”
“Go get us your art box first.”
“If I do, will you tell me which hatch leads to the stars?”
“Yup.”
“Done,” Harley says, and he disconnects the com link.
“What is that thing?” Amy asks me after a moment, when she’s sure I’m done talking with Harley. “I thought you all had tiny headsets or something, but that’s actually embedded in your skin, isn’t it?”
I brush my wi-com button with my fingers. “It’s a wi-com. Wireless communication link.”
“Does it hurt?”
I laugh. “No.”
“So cool,” Amy exhales, leaning in. Her soft, warm breath tickles the hairs near my ear. “It’s like a phone built into your ear.”
Her fingers brush the raised skin over my wi-com. My breath catches. She’s right in front of me, tantalizingly close. Amy bites her lip, and all I want to do is seize her, crush her against me, feel her lips with mine.
Then she steps back, dropping her hand, an unreadable expression on her face.
“Doc can, uh, get you one if you like,” I say, trying to ignore how much I want to grab her and pull her back to me.
Amy’s hands fly to the side of her neck, below her left ear. Her fingers smooth the skin. “No,” she says. “I don’t think I’d like one yet.”
Harley shows up a few moments later. He dumps his art box at our feet. I can tell part of him just wants to run off and open the hatch to the stars, but he’s also curious about what we’ll do with his art stuff. For that matter, so am I.
Amy rifles through the box, bypassing jars of paint, nubs of pencils, and scraps of paper. She finally pulls out a pile of charcoal wrapped in thin cloth. Then she smashes it on the ground.
“Hey!” Harley shouts. “I have to make that myself.”
“I need the powder,” Amy says, pulverizing the black bits of charcoal.
“Why?”
Amy grins. “Just watch.”
After selecting one of Harley’s loosest, biggest brushes, she runs the bristles through the black powder, and then twirls the brush over the surface of the morgue